sendmail-program default is determined at compilation time

[Toby Allsopp]

It seems that the default for sendmail-program is determined at
(Emacs) compilation time, which means that if the situation is
different at run time (e.g. if Emacs was compiled on a different
machine, as is the case for binary packages for e.g. Debian) the
default could be inappropriate.

sendmail-program is defined in paths.el as:

(defcustom sendmail-program
  (cond
    ((file-exists-p "/usr/sbin/sendmail") "/usr/sbin/sendmail")
    ((file-exists-p "/usr/lib/sendmail") "/usr/lib/sendmail")
    ((file-exists-p "/usr/ucblib/sendmail") "/usr/ucblib/sendmail")
    (t "fakemail"))                     ;In ../etc, to interface to /bin/mail.
  "Program used to send messages."
  :group 'mail
  :type 'file)

My problem is that the default for the Debian emacs-snapshot package
version 20060824-1 is "fakemail" because the machine that builds it
doesn't have sendmail installed.  I, however, do have
/usr/sbin/sendmail, but that isn't taken into account.

Is this the expected behaviour?

Toby.